


Gathering Thorns in our Blindness

by We_Have_Become_Anathema



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s02e01 In My Time of Dying, M/M, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 21:58:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/We_Have_Become_Anathema/pseuds/We_Have_Become_Anathema
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John and Dean die in the car accident, Sam is left alone in the world; however his dreams are not so empty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gathering Thorns in our Blindness

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Samifer Christmas Exchange, for melle-et-venenum over on Tumblr.

Sam awakes from the dream yet again. The same one he’s dreamt of every night, ever since the accident. The dream that leaves him shaky and paranoid and tired.

The doctors tell him that he is fortunate to be alive; lucky. He doesn’t feel lucky.

John hadn’t made it.

Dean hadn’t…

His bones ache somewhere deep down, far inside the hollows of marrow and dust.

But they tell him he’s so lucky to be alive. He wonders how they judge what makes a life worth living.

His legs are still recovering, but he’s out of traction finally, and they say he’ll be able to start psychical therapy to be able to walk soon. All good things.

Except he has nowhere to walk to and no one to walk with.

When he first came in they were worried that he’d had a concussion from his ramblings, saying crazy things about how the driver of the eighteen wheeler was possessed by the yellow eyed demon, how they were so close to killing the yellow eyed demon.

Sam makes sure not to answer any of their questions after the surgery. He makes real certain of that. But now he can’t ask them for anything to help with the dreams, can’t even think to talk to a therapist, because one wrong word comes out of his mouth and they’ll never let him go.

Where would he go, anyways?

And so Sam stares at the ceiling and counts the dots in the tile above his head, hating his catheter. Hating his life. But he can’t fall back asleep, he can’t, he can’t, he ca…

* * *

They tell you that the worst dreams are the ones where you’re falling, your body straining so hard to wake you up, to keep you from discovering the monster at the end of the book. They say that when the faces melt off and the bones are exposed that the vultures will finally leave your poor carcass alone. They say a lot of things that they have no business saying.

This is the worst dream he’s ever had. Will ever have. And it’s not reliving the crash, or feeling the guilt of not staying conscious to watch them die, or feeling the searing pain of the metal rod come crashing through the Impala and driving into his abdomen. No; it’s a courthouse. An ornate courthouse that smells of mahogany and leather bound books. A courthouse where all the faces of the people are blank, but their black eyes stare at him in adoration.

A courthouse where Sam isn’t on trial.

He’s the attorney.

But he still doesn’t understand who or what the thing he’s defending is; that tangled mass of thorns that moves ever so slightly, as if it’s breathing, that pools blood at the base of the chair and never replies to any questions.

It feels dangerous, malignant, cold.

It’s so cold inside the courthouse.

The blank faced demons’ teeth chatter like bones breaking and shattered glass.

It’s too much to look at the demons, to see the wonder and praise written so plainly on their masklike faces, so he has to turn back to the tangle of thorns.

And that’s when he realizes that the thorns are growing out of the chair, holding something in place, chaining it more effectively than iron would a fae. The creature under the thorns could be great or small, but there are too many thorns to see, to make a guess. And Sam _needs_ to know.

So he tears at the thorns and brambles with hands, clawing into the treacherous growth like a madman. Ignoring the pain as his hands are ripped to shreds, as muscle is cleaved and bone is exposed, he pushes on. His blood makes his hands sticky, slipping more and more often as he gets deeper; blood flowing down and being greedily absorbed by whatever is under all of this.

Sam can hear it breathing now, a labored wet breath, like the thorns are growing out of its chest, from its lungs.

He needs to know, needs to see.

He’s never been told the tale of the mother whose child was taken by Death. He simply doesn’t know that the thorns are taking things from him that he’ll never get back. He’s oblivious to the fact that his fingers are little more than bone or that his forearms are a mess of torn flesh and angry red flowing streams.

He needs to know, needs to see.

He can’t give up, won’t.

But for every inch he tears deeper into the mess, he feels the darkness encroaching all around him.

So dimly now, he can hear the judge calling for order. The gavel hits the sound block over and over and over until the noise beats in time with Sam’s slowing heart; but then all the sounds were lost to the silence that steals over the courthouse. A chilling silence, vacuum. Absolute.

Sam can’t hear but he knows that thing, person, animal, entity is still under there, breathing. He has the impression of breaths coming through the vines, as the thorns start to bite into the flesh higher and higher on his arms, but he’s losing so much feeling. So he doesn’t notice when the thorns anchor themselves in his shoulders and eagerly reach for his ribs, pulling him in faster than he can tear them away from whatever they’re covering.

Vision almost black, he finally sees it, as the scared bones of his left hand pull away the last thorn.

There is a face so beautiful it hurts to see, even with how much his eyes are failing. Sam thinks it’s a man, but the beauty surpasses gender, surpasses human. It is so serene in sleep, or perhaps death.

But Sam can still feel him breathing as the thorns pull him in, flush with the being.

And just when Sam is about to lose consciousness, the other moves against him, arms sliding up to embrace him as if he could be held any tighter than he already is, by the vines and the thorns and the brambles. And his eyes open, pure blue shards of glass, like chips from a glacier.

As Sam’s body finally gives up, heart beating nothing but dust and air, blood drained dry, he hears it. The voice of an angel.

“Thank you Sam… Don’t worry; I’ll guard your soul with my life…”

* * *

Sam’s awake again and his arms hurt, fingers feeling raw. He opens his eyes to find that they’ve restrained his arms, hands bloody and cut to shreds.

Somnambulism. That’s how they explain it. Somnambulism brought on by the traumatic experiences he’s been through.

And why won’t you just talk to the psychologists, Sam? It really would help you. Do you good.

Because he can’t. No one would believe him.

No one would understand that he’s started seeing the eyes when he’s awake. Or that the voice whispers when there’s silence.

So he remains silent and struggles to fix his legs in therapy that is slow and painful. The doctors praise the strength of his spirit, his tenacity.

They don’t know that Sam is empty inside, except for the mass of vines and thorns and brambles. His heart beating dust through atrophied veins. Lungs choking on stale air.

But he puts on a smile and strengthens his legs, if only so he can run from the silence and the eyes and the thorns inside him. Run and run and run until there’s nowhere left to go, but to sleep.

Sam thinks he’s going insane, thinks he already has.

No one seems to notice. No one can tell the difference because Sam never speaks unless spoken to, and he’s such a well-mannered boy.

* * *

Then one day a demon replaces his regular psychical therapist, black eyes staring at him with the same adoration from the dream. She introduces herself as Ruby and slits her wrist and holds the wound to Sam’s mouth. The blood is sweet and toxic and everything he needs and nothing he wants.

It’s better than mother’s milk.

It makes the thorns recede, loosens their hold on his necrotic heart, and fills his veins with more than the dreams of futures passed.

Sam doesn’t have anyone to tell him how wrong he is to drink from her wrist, how far off the reservation he’s gone.

Sam doesn’t have anyone.

But Ruby will do for now.

And she does, does anything for him. She comes in everyday, gives him blood when he needs it and supervises as he regains the strength in his legs.

She smiles and praises him when the nightmare no longer causes him to injure himself, when it changes so that he simply wills the thorns away.

She kisses him when he says that he thinks he might love her.

She never says it back, but she whimpers under him and never says no.

So perhaps that’s enough.

And she closes her eyes so that Sam can imagine they are those arctic ones that still haunt him.

And that is definitely enough.

* * *

Two years, and Sam’s eyes are as black as Ruby’s more often than not. His gaze is cruel and fever bright. He smiles with his teeth, but it always seems like a sneer.

So many things have changed.

But the dream remains the same.

Except.

Except that he is finally in control of it. He knows what the thorns hide, and he knows how to remove them without ever harming himself.

Sam and Ruby condemn a righteous man to Hell.

The dream that night subtly shifts.

As he finds himself in the courthouse, he turns to the demons in the juror’s box, and with a strong voice he calls out to them; confident, authoritative, and persuasive. Silver tongued. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.” Turning in a full circle, playing the crowd like a fiddle, he wills the thorns away, shows a man broken and bloodied and riddled from the brambles. An archangel chained and restrained, bound, blindfolded, and gagged. “This poor creature, better than any of them, was cast from their midst to this… this terrible fate.”

“A fate where all evils pour forth from him, where Sin is the vine and Death is the thorn. A fate where he knows neither the light of the sun nor the kiss of a breeze, condemned for all eternity for loving too well, too strong. For letting his love overflow his faculties, until he disobeyed his Father.”

Sam slits his wrist on a thorn and holds the wound to the broken angel’s lips.

As the lifeblood flows, corrupted and twisted and darkened, the fallen angel opens his blue eyes and stares into Sam’s face, an expression too alien to be understood.

“Will you let this poor man, glorious archangel as he once was, suffer under this curse for all eternity? Would you not assuage the anger of Heaven, loose his bounds, and release him from his torment?”

And when Sam rests, steps away from the angel, the blood has worked magic; for the archangel glows with a light that no sun, moon, or star can rival. He is resplendent in his Glory and Grace. He is rivaled by none, a commander in chains by will and by choice, waiting to hear the rightful outcome of his trial, the repeal of his sentence.

* * *

When Sam kills Lilith in the small chapel and the blood flows with a mind and purpose of its own, he hears that voice speak from the light that pours forth.

“Well done, my good and faithful servant in whom I am well pleased.”

The archangel coalesces from the light, and steps forward, embracing Sam as he has so many times in their dreams. “I never doubted that you would free me from my Cage of thorns.”

Sam closes his eyes and breathes deep. His angel smells of roses and blood and the Earth after summer rains.

“Are you finally ready to Join with me? The thorns will never again fill you or steal you away from me.” His voice is warm and entreating, as if in all the endless ages he has lived, and all the knowledge he has, he still doubts that it could ever be this easy. He still doubts that Sam would come to his defense.

Pulling back enough to see those eyes, those eyes that have haunted him for so long, he smiles the first real smile since the crash and replies, “I’ve wanted nothing more in my entire life.”

“Is that a yes?” The archangel asks with a smirk and mirth twinkling in his eyes that shine brighter than the Tannhauser Gate.

“… Yes.”

And then light envelops them both, burning away the thorns and flooding veins with starfire and moondust and the depths of space.

And Sam finally thinks that he was, indeed, lucky to have been alive.

 


End file.
